Post Grad: Degrees of boredom

Sometimes it's just better not to think too hard about what a movie is trying to say, and just ride with the laughs. Not that laughs come thick and fast in director Vicky Jenson's lightweight romantic comedy, Post Grad .

Sometimes it's just better not to think too hard about what a movie is trying to say, and just ride with the laughs. Not that laughs come thick and fast in director Vicky Jenson's lightweight romantic comedy, Post Grad.

But when they do, it's thanks to the off-kilter and slightly too self-conscious antics of Michael Keaton as a nitwit dad trying to ease his college-graduate daughter's way into the working world, and Carol Burnett as a wacky grandmother who's constantly fixin' to die.

They're refreshing distractions from the dreary central plot and the unpleasant lead character, Ryden Malby (Alexis Bledel from TV's The Gilmore Girls), who's convinced she's headed for big things in the publishing world .

When the job goes to her nasty nemesis (Knocked Up's Catherine Reitman, daughter of the movie's producer, Ivan Reitman), Ryden is forced to move back home and into the bosom of her dysfunctional and crazy, but nonetheless happy and loving, family.

But she's not happy. Life is hard. Job hunting is humiliating. Menial work, even temporary, is an embarrassment for Ryden, whose aspirations in the executive literary world – one that seems robustly impervious to the effects of the digital revolution – never seem to wane, though we never actually see her reading a book.

Her subsequent efforts to join the working world are derailed by her efforts to keep longtime admirer Adam (Zach Gilford), a bound-for-Columbia law school contender who really just wants to be an indie singer-songwriter, in the "just friends" zone, while she falls for a hunky Brazilian infomercial director, Rodrigo (David Santiago).

If this sounds like the plotline of an episode of Father Knows Best or The Brady Bunch, you're on the money. With its family of well-off, well-meaning bumblers living large and oblivious in a cozy, all-white pocket of suburbia, Post Grad is an insipid throwback to a sanctified and safe middle-class America that no longer exists, if it ever did.

What the movie says about being young in the '00s, and getting a start in the real world, you could read in a cheap and cheerful greeting card message.

Post Grad deserves a failing grade.

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.